


bullet for a tooth

by allandmore99



Series: nobody know [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Fight Scene, Happy Ending, Temporary Character Death, bamf nile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:26:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29786415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allandmore99/pseuds/allandmore99
Summary: A mission goes south and Nile thinks that her worst fear is being realised. Andy would tell her to have a little faith.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Nile Freeman
Series: nobody know [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2189418
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35





	bullet for a tooth

**Author's Note:**

> The first part of what I promised at the end of the last story!

They still weren’t used to their new fightingformation—shielding Andy, down one Booker, up one Nile who couldn’t quite compensate because their skills were different and she was just so new—which was probably why everything went pear-shaped.

The other reason was that they were outrageously outnumbered. Nicky didn’t have a clean shot from his sniper perch and was trying to sneak around the other side of the building to get in that way; Joe had taken far longer than he expected to retrieve and destroy the extremely dangerous chemical weapons which Copley had tipped them off about; and that left Andy guarding the door and Nile guarding Andy, pretty much.

Nile did pretty well with the first wave of heavily armed mercenaries who burst through the door, and she even held up valiantly against the second bunch that followed, but then her gun jammed and in the split second that she looked at it to see what was the problem, she heard a bullet whiz past her, damning. 

It happened so fast that the spark of fear only caught up with her at the same time that she heard the scream. She whirled around, uncaring of the shots which hit her own shoulders, just in time to see Andy crumple to the ground. Nile shrieked, an inhuman thing, because she knew that their time had been limited when they started this, she knew, but she had thought they had more time. She had thought that she would get to see if Andy looked as handsome as she imagined with grey hair, had wanted to ask her so many things about her long years of life, the small things and the big things. She had wanted to hear about how empires had risen and fallen, and to hear about what it was like to bake bread four thousand years ago, and about sunsets over the Nile Delta.

“Andy,” she gasped out, bending at her side, clapping a hand to where Andy had been shot—the opposite side of her gut from where Booker had gotten her—but she could already tell that it was too late. Andy offered her a weak smile and a kiss blown through the air and then closed her eyes, and Nile had no space for her grief because she was so full of fury, she was burning red-hot with it as it consumed her. How dare they, how dare these insignificant goons snuff out a six-thousand-year old spark? 

She threw down her jammed gun, and reached down to pick up Andy’s beloved labrys, heedless of how her hands became drenched in Andy’s blood as she took the weapon from her lover’s side. “She was worshipped as a god,” Nile spit at them. “And you are nothing, no one,” and then she struck out at them. Even in her rage, she was careful. She had never fought with the axe before, but she remembered every trick she had picked up from watching Andy, thousands of images of Andy fighting with her trusty labrys flashing through Nile’s brain. She cut through them like butter, dancing around their thrown punches and their bullets—well, most of their bullets, but she only took two hits to the shoulder that she didn’t let slow her down—and dropping them, one by one. 

She had no idea how long it took—it might have been five minutes or an hour, but when she was done, her panting the only sound in the room and her rage slowly cooling, leaving room for her grief, she looked around and saw the carnage that she had left behind. Twenty two men she had cut down, and it wasn’t a drop in the bucket compared to the loss of Andy, how the whole world seemed dimmer. 

She steeled herself to turn around then, determined to get Andy’s body out of there so that they could give her some kind of dignified funeral at least, and when she turned, her eyes met Andy’s. The other woman was eerily pale, had struggled to push herself up on one elbow and had her hand clapped to her side where she had been wounded, but she was  alive , and Nile was by her side in a second. “Andy?” She asked in disbelief. She had been sure that Andy had died, had felt her breath growing short, had felt the blood pouring from her side. Could she somehow have been mistaken? Or had Andy only managed to hang on a few more minutes, only to die now, in Nile’s arms?

Nile let the labrys clatter to the floor, and bent to press her forehead to Andy’s instead, savouring this moment even if it might be the last one. Andy’s breathing did seem more even than before, and Nile cupped her face in her hands. “Andy—don’t talk if it hurts,” she pleaded, because Andy immediately tried to say something and instead gave a great hacking cough that sounded painful. “Just stay with me, Andy, please,” she begged, her mind racing as she tried to think of how to get Andy to a hospital that wouldn’t ask too many questions, how maybe there was still time to fix this.

She lifted up Andy’s soaked shirt to try and assess how bad the damage was. There was a lot of blood, that was clear, but—the wound wasn’t nearly as bad as she expected, didn’t even seem as bad as the one Andy had gotten when Booker shot her, and Nile blinked in surprise, then she heard another wet cough and looked up at Andy who was clearly gathering her strength to speak. “I’m healing, Nile,” she whispered with as much of a smile as she could manage given the pain that she was in. “It’s just slow, like—“ another cough, and Nile entwined their fingers, uncaring that they were both covered in grime and gore. “Like the first time all over again,” she explained, and Nile could swear that her heart skipped several beats.

“You’re—are you sure?” She asked, because she didn’t dare to hope, not even as she looked down at the wound again and thought that it looked a little smaller and cleaner than when she had looked a few seconds before. “I’m—fuck, that hurts—sure,” Andy reassured her. “I’m an old hat at this, remember?” She squeezed Nile’s hand. “Just give me a few minutes,” and the desperate, dangerous hope was what finally broke Nile, and she gave a wrenching sob, burying her face in Andy’s shoulder. “I thought you were gone, Andy,” she gasped out, and Andy brought the hand that wasn’t holding Nile’s to the back of Nile’s head, just resting and rubbing her thumb against the nape of Nile’s neck, a constant reminder that she was there, and she was alive, and that she was getting stronger with every pass of her thumb over Nile’s skin. 

“I know,” Andy replied quietly. “I thought so too, but it’s okay, Nile, I’m here.” Nile sniffled a bit, her fingers tightening in Andy’s. “Don’t leave me,” she pleaded, and when she pulled her head up to look at Andy, the other woman was smiling properly, her face less strained with pain. “I don’t think I’m going to have to,” she replied. “Look, Nile,” she urged her, bringing Nile’s hand to the wound that was nearly closed. “It’s alright. I’m alright.”

Nile felt as if she was bursting with relief, and she leaned in to kiss Andy deeply, though she still held her body carefully up off of Andy’s to ensure that she wouldn’t brush against the healing wound. “I love you,” she whispered. They didn’t say it often; neither of them were poets like Joe or brimming with quiet love like Nicky, but it didn’t mean that it wasn’t true. Andy’s eyes softened and she breathed out a sigh, long and slow against Nile’s cheek. “I love you too, Nile,” she replied. “I hope you always know that.” Then, because that was more than enough romance for the two of them, Andy quirked an eyebrow, playful enough that Nile knew she must be feeling better. “And don’t think I didn’t notice how competent you were with that axe, if I hadn’t been bleeding out on the floor I would have jumped you right after that little display.” Nile laughed, giddy, and Andy poked her in the side. “I’m serious, if you think I’m going to let you off without properly training you with it now, you’re badly mistaken,” and they were both still laughing when Joe and Nicky burst in.

“Nile—boss—“ Joe burst out while Nicky looked around at the bloodbath left behind, equal parts horrified and impressed. “Are you alright? We were worried—“ He didn’t need to finish the sentence, because it was pretty clear what they had been worried about. Andy just smiled and stripped off her ruined shirt, letting them have a full view of the wound which was fading into a scar and then into nothing at all. “Well, ideally I need to borrow someone’s jacket, but otherwise I think I’m going to be just fine,” she replied, and then she let Nile pull her to her feet.

**Author's Note:**

> This gave me so many emotions and I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
> 
> Also, fun fact, I was drafting part of it on my phone and when Andy says “I’m an old hat” it tried to autocorrect to “I’m an old gay”, and...well. It’s not wrong, is it? I vote that the name of the Joe/Nicky origin movie is “The Old Guard: The Old Gays” and the Andy/Quynh origin movie sequel is “The Old Guard: The Older Gays”.


End file.
